


How did we get here?

by omgbellamy



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 5x10, Angst, Arguing, Bellarke, Canon Compliant, Confrontations, Episode: s05e10 The Warriors Will, F/M, Fights, Friendship, Hurt No Comfort, Love, Minor Becho, bellarke need to get their shit together, enjoy this or whatever, grounders, there is no resolution to this 'cause i am terrible at writing them properly, they are having an angsty fight, trying to get back on track, woods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 03:58:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15380166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omgbellamy/pseuds/omgbellamy
Summary: “Yeah. Fuck, Clarke, we really messed it up this time, didn’t we?”She laughs softly, but he notes it’s bitter. It tastes awful on his tongue, hearing her feel so defeated. “Yeah. We did.”“How can we fix this?” He runs a hand over his face, rubbing it down in frustration. He doesn’t know much, but he knows that in some twisted way, they’re on the same side, and that even if they are broken, bruised and at odds, that they are meant to be working together and maybe more, if they can ever return to a semblance of normalcy.“I don’t know,” Clarke says honestly.Yeah, his mind echoes, neither do fucking I.





	How did we get here?

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys here's my angsty bellarke fic for 5x10, cause we deserve an angsty-ass conversation and a good resolution, but the writers and Jason won't feed us that, so I thought, 'fuck it, I will do it myself'. Spoilers for 5x10, maybe slightly OOC, but I tried my best. Enjoy huns! :)

The atmosphere is frosty to say the least.

Bellamy had arrived in the valley two days ago, and she hadn’t said a word to him. He saw a flash of something in her eyes when he’d walked through the clearing – something akin to relief, he liked to think. But other than that she’d been radio silent.

It stung. It hurt him that they’d somehow got to this place. They’d found themselves on opposite sides before, but somehow, this was worse. Bringing Madi into the mix made it personal, Bellamy knew that, as Madi herself reminded him.

Bellamy, if I do this, she’ll never forgive you.

He felt awful about it. The sickening feeling in his stomach only grew when he saw Madi again. She had given him a reassuring smile as if to tell him she was ok, but he knew better. He’d seen Clarke after the flame, and she only had it in her head for about a day. It took her a long while to come to and she was disorientated afterwards. He didn’t like to delve too deep into how the flame would affect an actual born nightblood.

His friends had greeted him with a warm chorus of welcomes and hugs. He’d missed them. They were his family, after all, and he’d done it to protect them, amongst their other people. He’d seen Kane and hugged him, much to Diyoza’s own annoyance. She didn’t have much interest in letting him stay, but after he’d told her what he’d done to Octavia, she reconsidered. She made a snide comment that there must’ve been a reason why he poisoned her, and he told her it was to save his people. But deep down he knew otherwise. He knew now his sister wasn’t his sister – she was Blodreina, and that was exactly what she wanted. Her threat to Clarke’s life was not empty, and he knew he could not let her kill Clarke. He wouldn’t.

He wished she could understand why. The war was inevitable and with Madi as commander, Wonkru’s bond would break and cause a split in group, therefore enabling Wonkru weaker and unable to march on the valley. She was their best chance at making peace since Wonkru didn’t want to negotiate and share the valley. They had to take the chance. 

He’s sitting by the campfire when a hand taps his shoulder. “Bellamy.”

Bellamy blinks in surprise as Echo sits down next to him. She gives him a chaste kiss, but it doesn’t feel right somehow. “Clarke and I had a talk,” she tells him.

Bellamy stiffens. “You did?”

“Yes. She told me she left you behind to die.”

Bellamy balls his fists, still trying not to get angry at that. He felt betrayed by that. He understood her anger, but after all they’d been through, and the countless amounts of times they’d saved each other and now she decided to leave him and to die? He couldn’t help feeling pissed at that.

“I was angry at her. I yelled for a while, but she told me what you did, and that Octavia put you in the pit.” She bites her lip, looking concerned. He doesn't miss the way her eyes scan him for injuries, eyeing the few bruises he had sustained during the fight.

Bellamy nods. “Indra, Gaia and I. She called us traitors.”

“You poisoned your own sister....” Echo says, looking stunned. She tugs on one of her intricate braids, as if she’s trying to wrap her head around the idea.

“I had to. She was a threat to us. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“Not us. Clarke,” Echo corrected. She gives Bellamy a sad and knowing smile, as if she knows something he doesn’t.

“Well, yes. But all of us, Echo.”

“But she didn’t threaten just anybody’s life, did she?” She doesn’t sound accusatory, but Bellamy can hear her implication all the same. She chose Clarke, because she knows she makes you weak.

Bellamy looks at Echo questioningly. “Monty let it slip,” she says, apologetically. “He said you’d spoke upon it with him on the way here.”

“Yeah, Echo, but that’s not—“

She holds up a hand as if to silence him. She sighs. “It means something Bellamy. Whether now is the right time or not to speak about it is questionable, but I can’t be like this anymore.”

“Like what?” he asks, confused.

She shakes her head, looking away from him. “Living in uncertainty with you and with us. We don’t work down here, I think we have to face that fact. Being absent from you made me realise that. As soon as you were gone, I morphed back into my old self. I betrayed Raven’s trust to save my own ass. That’s the Azgeda in me. I thought being in space erased that, but it only suppressed it. The facts are I love you, and I know you love me too, but you’re not in love with me. At least not how I want you to be. She’s in love with you, too, I’m sure. How sad she was when she said she left you behind...that wasn’t just the guilt talking, Bellamy. Let’s also not forget you have Octavia to contend with, and you’ll have to deal with her when she marches on. Your sister may be lost to the darkness, but Clarke is not. You should try and fix it for both of your sakes and the rest of ours.” 

Bellamy looks at her, shocked. Was that a breakup? He tried to think of a rebuttal, but deep down he was right. The soon as Echo had left the Wonkru camp it felt like a goodbye. And he’d heard from Raven too that she had been working with Diyoza. Being back on the ground gave her purpose. Up in space, all they had was time. Everyone had their outlets. Monty had the algae farm, Raven had her engineering and maintenance of the ship with Emori, and he, Echo and Murphy had their training. It worked for them because they had nothing but time to kill, but coming back to the ground had shifted their priorities. Suddenly, Bellamy had his bloodthirsty sister to deal with who wanted to cause a war and murder his girlfriend and his best friend.  
He wasn’t naive – he knew had to pick a side, and he had. He’d chosen Clarke in some backwards way. Putting his sister’s life in jeopardy had cleared that path for him. But now it seemed to him like he’d lost them both. But his main focus was his space crew, the people he was intertwined with for six years.

He looks at Echo apologetically. “I’m sorry.”

She gives him a sad smile. “Yeah. So am I,” she says and she walks away.

He doesn’t sleep well that night.

The next two days they spend strategizing about how to counteract Wonkru. Bellamy knew they’d reach the valley in the next two or three days, and that was when the war really would begin. Unsurprisingly Bellamy is in the middle of it with Diyoza and her own war council in the ship. She’s reduced to staying in the ship under the eye of watchful guards now, being a few months pregnant. Clarke helps take care of her and has become their resident doctor. Clarke had negotiated with her to try and get Abby away from McCreary’s clutches, arguing her mother was a much more experienced doctor, but Diyoza said he simply would not budge at this point. It was Diyoza who not-so-lightly broke the news to Clarke that her mother was in fact an addict, and Clarke had become more frantic than ever.

“We have to get her out of there!” Clarke shouts. “We need her here for the wounded and the sick once the war hits.”

“McCreary will not let her go, Clarke,” Diyoza says, swinging around in her desk chair. “He’s sick and he’s a selfish bastard. He’ll hold her there until she decides to give him a cure.”

“And what if she doesn’t?” Clarke asks, fearing the worst.

“He’ll kill her,” Diyoza says simply, catching the worry etched on Clarke’s face.

“He’s a psychopath,” Murphy murmurs from the corner of the room, fixed by a glare from Diyoza.

“Fine. I’ll have to go and get her myself.”

“Clarke, you can’t just go after her. It’s too dangerous—”

“I didn’t ask you!” Clarke sneers at Bellamy, whipping her head around and storming out of the ship.

Everyone is stunned into silence and Diyoza clicks her tongue. “Uh-oh. Lovers tiff?” she quips, smirking at Bellamy. 

Bellamy ignores her, not rising to the bait. He understands the implication; she had thought they were boyfriend and girlfriend.

Bellamy breaks into a jog as he spots Clarke making long strides heading into the woods. It reminds him back of when they’d argued about their plan to get to Polis with Roan, and Clarke had stormed off into the woods in anger. Of course, this time she was a lot smarter and carried her pack everywhere she went, including her gun and its holster.

He caught up to and grabs at her arm to slow her pace. 

Clarke whirls around, wrenching her arm free from his grip, despite it being light. He knows her; he knows that she's making a point to him. He doesn't have the right to be up in her space anymore.

“Don’t touch me,” she snaps.

He recoils again as if she had slapped him again. His stomach twists at the memory. They’d fought and yelled at each other, but they had never gotten to that point before. To think that she was so angry that she did that made his heart hurt.

He understood it. He understood it was the heat of the moment that if they had even had a time to sit and talk that maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Maybe she would’ve understood his side – she may not have wanted it, but maybe she’d get it. He knew if it was any other child, she probably would have been willing. Because they made the sacrifices and they lived through it for everybody else.

“Clarke,” he says, frustrated.

“What? What do you want?”

He resists frowning at her. He’s so tired. He’s so tired of conflict and war, so tired of not knowing where he stands and where he belongs anymore. He knows who his people are, but he doesn’t really know himself where he’s going anymore.

“Are you really asking me that?” 

“Well, I don’t know what you’re doing out here, so if you’ll excuse me,” She begins to walk past him, but he grabs her arm again.

“Clarke,” he sighs, “We have to talk.”

“Talk?” She questions, tilting her head. “You want to talk. Ok. So let’s talk. So you put Madi’s life in danger, after you promised me you’d protect her, you leave me chained up – again – and you tell me I’m not your family. That sums it up, doesn’t it?”

Bellamy winces. He knows he’s fucked up, but there is a bigger reason. If he doesn’t believe that, then all of it’s for nothing. Jeopardising his friendship with her meant nothing.  
“I’m sorry,” he says sincerely, trying to meet her gaze. She won’t look at him. Apparently, she’s more interested in her boot than him.

He catches her inhale, figuring that the apology at least gets a reaction from her. “But Clarke, I had to. It was the only way to keep everyone safe and get away from Wonkru. Madi was the only solution, you have to understand that.”

Clarke shakes her head. “No, Bellamy. You decided that was the only solution. You didn’t even consult me, or talk to me, again. It’s like I don’t even matter anymore in any of the decision-making. You didn’t think about how it would affect or hurt Madi.” She looks at him, betrayed and he tries not to flinch. She’d looked at him with hurt in her eyes before, but never like that. Never like she’d been betrayed by him.

He runs a hand through his hair, clearly frustrated. She doesn’t get it. She never will. He understands that she’s a mother now. Fuck, he was the one who’d called her a mama bear. Madi had understood, she had been willing, even. She understood the power of the commander and the flame itself. He felt terrible for her, but she’d done it out of her own bravery and to save Clarke.

He wants desparately to put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her. “Of course in this, Clarke. You matter to me.”

She looks like she doesn’t believe him. “That’s not what you said a few days ago,” She snaps, “You said I wasn’t your family, if I recall.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t know anything about you anymore, Bellamy, or them.”

“I had no choice,” he repeats again. “They were in danger.”

Clarke scoffs. “And Madi wasn’t?”

“The flame will protect Madi. You said so yourself when you went into the City of Light.”

Clarke widens her eyes. He’s using her own words against her? She shakes her head. “No. That was different.”

“Was it?” he counters. “You did it for the same reasons: to save our people. And I did, too. I’m sorry I hurt you, Clarke. I never intended to hurt you or to put Madi in danger. But you hurt me, too. You left me behind to die.”

She softens a little. The sincerity in his voice makes her ache. She wants so badly to believe him, to understand his reasons, but all her head can think is: Madi. Madi. She’s her whole world, her heart and her soul, and he put her in danger. She gets the need to protect their people or should she say his people. But at the expense of Madi’s safety...she can’t just let that go.

“I understand,” she relents finally, “But I can’t...I can’t trust you yet. I’m sorry I left you behind,” she wipes a stray tear from her eye. “I shouldn’t of left you – any of you. But Madi...all I could think about was Madi, and we were offered a way out, even if Octavia was going to execute us both.”

Bellamy’s eyes widen. “She was going to? – Fuck. Clarke...”

Clarke looks at him, her eyes flickering between them both. She looks up at him now, really looks up at him. “I should’ve known,” she says, laughing humourlessly. “Blodreina would never show mercy for a traitor or an enemy of Wonkru.” Bellamy doesn’t comment, and she figures he has no room to argue. But then a thought occurs to her. “But you’re here,” she registers, finally realising. “Did you escape?”

He shakes his head. “No. She was going to give me an advantage to kill Indra and Gaia. But Monty was the one who stopped the fight by showing the people in the pit the farm’s growth. The algae has started to grow and so has the farm. He showed it to everyone and they started an uprising chant against Octavia, and she burned the farm down.”

Clarke inhales sharply. She sees the hurt on his face as he recalls it. She understands how it feels to be so separated from someone. From her friends and from her best friend. But she still held onto him for six years. Six years of fucking radio calls, crying and weeping to a radio where she heard nothing back. But she still has yet to tell him. She figures now isn't the time, and that there may never be one. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Fuck, Clarke, we really messed it up this time, didn’t we?”

She laughs softly, but he notes it’s bitter. It tastes awful on his tongue, hearing her feel so defeated. “Yeah. We did.”

“How can we fix this?” He runs a hand over his face, rubbing it down in frustration. He doesn’t know much, but he knows that in some twisted way, they’re on the same side, and that even if they are broken, bruised and at odds, that they are meant to be working together and maybe more, if they can ever return to a semblance of normalcy.

“I don’t know,” Clarke says honestly.

Yeah, his mind echoes, neither do fucking I.


End file.
